1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to storage architecture solutions. More particularly, and not by way of any limitation, the present invention is directed to a distributed scalable storage fabric architecture solution for use with a network element.
2. Description of Related Art
Over the last two decades or so, telecommunication services have evolved rapidly from simple telephone calls and fax communications to a host of advanced services such as multi-party conferences, voice mail, call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, number portability, et cetera. This rapid evolution has been made possible primarily due to the successful deployment of the Intelligent Network (IN) and Advanced IN (AIN) architecture using Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) as the out-of-band signaling protocol infrastructure. Similarly, data services have also followed a significant transformation from basic text messaging in the 1980s to the World Wide Web and Internet of today, where transporting diverse media has become commonplace. For example, bandwidth-intensive services such as desktop video conferencing, video on demand, telemedicine, real-time audio, and many other applications are driving the demand for simultaneous support of different types of services on she same public network.
Coupled with the phenomenal popularity of the Internet, recently there has been a tremendous interest in using the packet-switched network (PSN) infrastructure employed in the data networks (e.g., those based on Internet Protocol (IP) addressing) as a replacement for, and/or as an adjunct to, the existing circuit-switched network (CSN) infrastructure deployed in tcday's voice networks. Several advantages are expected to be realized due to such integration. From network operators' viewpoint, the inherent traffic aggregation in PSN allows for a reduction in the cost of transmission and the infrastructure cost per end-user. Ultimately, such cost reductions enable the network operators to pass on the savings to subscribers or, more generally, users. Also, operators of a new breed of service-centric networks (referred to as next-generation networks, distinct from the existing voice-centric and data-centric networks) are poised to offer enhanced services with integrated voice/data/video to users who will be using endpoints having diverse multimedia capabilities.
It is axiomatic that as the service capabilities of the networks continue to grow, the requirements of databases associated therewith, which databases are necessary to facilitate the provisioned services as well as network administration and traffic management, also increase concomitantly. Not only do the database size and performance requirements go up, but the database architectural arrangement itself must be scalable also in order to be able to accommodate increased network traffic and connectivity.
In conventional database implementations, as the memory-resident database size requirements increase, they outpace the amount of available random access memory (RAM) that can physically be placed on a processor board due to form factor constraints. However, using a hard disk drive with a large storage capacity does not offer a viable solution because of unacceptable levels of data search latency.
Various other solutions that address the increased database requirements also have several deficiencies and shortcomings. For example, although a solid state disk can offer increased capacity without degrading search latency performance, it is extremely expensive and adds extra packaging requirements to the system. Providing additional RAM capacity on a processor card is only a limited option due to the form factor requirements that the cards must adhere to. While separate memory expansion modules may be added to the processor cards by means of a mezzanine card, such solutions are not entirely satisfactory because the mezzanine cards typically have compact form factors.